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UPCOMING EVENTS
7.40PM THURSDAY MARCH 19TH​​​​​​​
PAUL SCHRADER'S
AMERICAN GIGOLO
4K RESTORATION ​​​​​​​​
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It Is Still 1985 Brighton's legendary 80s party (every Saturday at Green Door Store) turns 18 this year. To celebrate the night 'coming of age' White Wall Cinema are collaborating with 1985 for a new season of films called 'Sex in the Eighties' starting with this Paul Schrader classic.​
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From writer–director Paul Schrader (screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and director of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and First Reformed) comes a defining landmark of American style. Not only the key influence on American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, American Gigolo was the film that made Giorgio Armani and Richard Gere household names in the United States. Gere models a sensational array of Armani suits throughout, except when he doesn’t, as the film was also one of the first mainstream Hollywood productions to feature frontal male nudity from its leading man. Featuring an effortlessly cool score by electronic disco legend Giorgio Moroder and the No. 1 soundtrack hit “Call Me” by Blondie, this 1980 masterpiece was a game-changer that set the tone for an entire decade.
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Living in his minimalist Los Angeles apartment (before minimalism was even a thing) Julian Kaye (Gere) is the embodiment of cultivated taste: impeccably dressed, fluent in several languages, and devoted to the finer things in life. A high-class escort Julian finances his lavish lifestyle catering to a roster of wealthy women, and cultivates a carefully maintained sense of emotional detachment. But when he begins a relationship with the wife of a powerful senator and is framed for a murder he did not commit, his meticulously controlled world begins to unravel.
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Slick yet substantive, Schrader never allows the high design and neon glow of the 1980s to overshadow the film’s European art-house sensibility or the moral gravity of its subject. Sophisticated and coolly detached yet charged with undercurrents of passion, American Gigolo is a tautly restrained melodrama and is one of the defining films of its era as well as an enduring icon of 80s style. Beautifully restored in 4K for the first time, it remains a ravishing work that radiates understated opulence from every frame and demands big screen viewing.
8PM FRIDAY MARCH 27TH​​​​​​​
THE HITCHER
(1986)
4K RESTORATION ​​
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This rip-roaring vehicular thriller roars proudly in the tradition of motorway-stalking cult classics like Duel and Road Games - but The Hitcher boasts a far more potent secret weapon: the maniacal menace of Blade Runner legend Rutger Hauer.
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Tasked with transporting a car cross-country, young motorist Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell, of The Outsiders fame) begins to nod off behind the wheel and makes a decision that proves catastrophically misguided, he picks up a hitchhiker for company. The stranger (Hauer) calmly claims to be a killer, and although Jim manages to force him from the vehicle, any sense of relief is short-lived. What follows is a relentless descent into terror as the hitchhiker’s full psychopathic mania is unleashed. With the help of truck-stop waitress Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh, later of The Hateful Eight and Single White Female), Jim is thrust into a desperate fight for survival.
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Hauer is electrifying. Weaponising his trademark wild-eyed intensity, he delivers a performance that feels almost supernatural, an embodiment of random cruelty and unstoppable destruction. He doesn’t simply play a villain; he becomes an elemental force stalking the asphalt.
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Despite unleashing one brutal set piece after another, The Hitcher remains lean, mean, and stripped to the bone. It plays like a sun-scorched fever dream, ruthless, existential, and soaked in dread. Marrying eerie, uncanny atmosphere with unapologetic B-movie thrills, it stands as a rare genre piece that is both artfully minimal, pulse-poundingly savage with a lingering stylistic mood that’s hard to shake. The Hitcher is a perfectly calibrated, tension-soaked Friday night big screen treat.
7.20PM GOOD FRIDAY APRIL 3RD​​​​​​​
GHOST WORLD
4K RESTORATION ​​
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The beloved adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ underground comic Ghost World is our White Wall Cinema Good Friday special. Directed by Terry Zwigoff (Crumb), the film perfectly captures the acerbic wit, deadpan humour, and teenage angst of its two lead characters, effortlessly portrayed by Thora Birch (American Beauty) and Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation, Under the Skin). They’re joined by screen legend Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs, The Big Lebowski), delivering one of his most memorable performances.
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When misfit friends Enid (Birch) and Rebecca (Johansson) graduate from high school, they find themselves adrift in the malaise of a long, post-graduation summer. Beyond enrolling in an art class, adulthood feels frustratingly out of reach, but at least they still have each other. Their fragile bond begins to fray when the cynical duo prank a lonely, middle-aged record collector (Buscemi). What starts as a joke gradually becomes something more complicated, as one of them forms an unexpected attachment that drives a wedge between the pair.
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Wryly observed and darkly hilarious, Ghost World is a film for anyone who has ever felt out of place, who never quite fit in or earned a seat at the popular table. Widely regarded as one of the finest coming-of-age films of the 2000s, it has maintained a devoted cult following for more than two decades. A sharp satire of consumerist America and a bleakly funny yet deeply endearing portrait of adolescent alienation, Ghost World endures through its parade of oddball characters, its Oscar-nominated screenplay, and its eclectic soundtrack of vintage obscurities. Ghost World has more than earned its place as one of the twenty-first century’s most fiercely beloved comedies and as our Good Friday Bank Holiday special.
BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND DOUBLE BILL
7PM SUNDAY APRIL 5TH​​​​​​​
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THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO
BANZAI
ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION
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JOHN CARPENTER'S
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA​​
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Two cult classics, one night, zero sense of normalcy. If you love action, humour, and just a dash of absurdity, this Bank Holiday double bill is your destiny. Originally, Big Trouble in Little China was partly conceived as a sequel to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, making this the perfect pairing.
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First up: the greatest movie about a neurosurgeon, physicist, test pilot, rock star, comic book hero, and samurai you’ll ever see. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai follows the titular hero, played by Peter Weller (yes, RoboCop himself), on his quest to save the world from evil aliens.
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With aliens from the 8th dimension played by John Lithgow (3rd Rock from the Sun, Conclave) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) battling the likes of Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, The Fly) and Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers, Promising Young Woman, HBO’s The Penguin), this offbeat sci-fi comedy is irresistibly bonkers.
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Some of the most gloriously nonsensical fun ever committed to celluloid, it has also become a hugely influential cult classic. Wes Anderson even copied the film’s ending almost verbatim for the closing moments of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, while the pop-culture buffet that is Ready Player One features numerous references to Buckaroo Banzai—so much so that Steven Spielberg’s film sees the main character dressing like Buckaroo himself.
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Following that, a film that was once proposed as Buckaroo’s sequel before being reshaped into another gloriously offbeat classic from John Carpenter: Big Trouble in Little China. Director of Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Starman, Escape from New York, and They Live, Carpenter is no stranger to pulpy, genre-bending cult hits, but Big Trouble might just be the quirkiest of them all.
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When truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell – The Thing, Death Proof) makes a routine delivery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he suddenly finds himself caught in the middle of a supernatural conflict between two ancient Chinese warrior societies. Before long he’s dragged into a wild rescue mission with his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) and sharp-tongued, fearless lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall – Sex and the City) to save Wang’s fiancée from the clutches of the 2,000-year-old sorcerer David Lo Pan (James Hong – Everything Everywhere All at Once).
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Packed with irresistible dialogue, gleefully chaotic martial arts battles, and fantasy-style wizardry, the film also features one of Kurt Russell’s most iconic performances: a swaggering hero who thinks he’s the star of the show but is almost entirely out of his depth. Big Trouble in Little China is a Pork-Chop-Express-load of fun beloved by filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, Edgar Wright, and James Gunn. Its influence can be felt everywhere from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Guardians of the Galaxy to the Mortal Kombat series.
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Join us this Bank Holiday Sunday for a spectacular interdimensional adventure and a double dose of tongue-in-cheek action.
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